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March 2016

Michael Connor The Iraqi Money Scandal, 40 Years On

Although the “Iraqi money affair” is regarded as a post-Dismissal sideshow it may well be part of a much larger endeavour: the flow of Middle Eastern money to unions and pro-Arab, anti-Israel activists in Australia. The cast of shady characters makes such speculation impossible to avoid.
Seven days before Gough Whitlam’s dismissal, the US Ambassador in Canberra told Whitlam that neither the CIA nor any other American government agencies secretly funded any political group or candidate in Australia, and the assurance was put into writing for the Department of Foreign Affairs. In Washington, the Assistant Secretary of State called on the Australian Deputy Head of Mission and repeated the claim.[1] Five days after the dismissal, Whitlam authorised an attempt to obtain and launder secret election funding from Iraq’s ruling Ba’ath Party for the ALP.

Recent evidence in declassified ASIO and Commonwealth Police files, and other accounts which have emerged since 1975, offer fresh perspectives on the excuses, cover-ups and agreed-upon fictions of the “Iraqi money affair”. Accounts of Whitlam’s breakfast meeting with the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and his companion, a relation of Saddam Hussein representing the Ba’ath Party, generally run on conventional lines with Whitlam being criticised for his behaviour then generously excused, as the event is made to appear a rather unimportant sideshow. At the same time, Rupert Murdoch, writing the biggest story in Australia’s political history, is pilloried for having unfairly used the event to attack Whitlam. This modern fairy tale has two parts—the lead-up to Whitlam’s encounter with the Iraqi thugs, and the events around the scandal becoming public knowledge.

Once upon a time, the Sunday after the dismissal, an ALP executive meeting was held in Sydney to discuss the unplanned-for election. Pro-Arab left-winger and Victorian Senate candidate Bill Hartley suggested to ALP National Secretary David Combe that campaign funds could be raised in the Middle East. Combe carried the proposal to Whitlam, who in the stress of the political disaster, approved the idea and suggested that well-known menswear retailer Reuben Scarf, the director of the non-profit Scarf Foundation, had proven Middle East contacts and would be a suitable go-between to act for the ALP.[2] Late that afternoon, before returning to Melbourne, Hartley contacted Henry Fischer, a co-director of the Foundation, and discussed the scheme with him. Fischer was interested and Hartley phoned the news to Combe. That night Whitlam and Combe visited Fischer at home. There were nuts and a bottle of German wine. Whitlam had a glass, Combe and Fischer finished the bottle—never mind that Fischer was a teetotaller.[3] No money was talked about, yet several days later Fischer flew to Baghdad to arrange the generous gift for the ALP. Two good-fairy Iraqi emissaries, secret police chief and torturer Farouk Abdulla Yehya and Saddam’s relative Ghafil Jassim Al-Tikriti, arrived and met Whitlam for breakfast and half a million dollars US was (Fischer in 1976)[4] or was not (Jenny Hocking in 2012)[5] handed over, and anyway Fischer stole the money (Fairfax Media in 2015).[6]

Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel? by Shoshana Bryen

President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.”

Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And Obama’s abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.

It is estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014, four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces. This is a far cry from 2011, when Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”

He needs to find a “success.” Cue the Middle East “peace process.”

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another “peace plan” designed by the Obama administration. There isn’t much new in it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. might support a UN Security Council resolution calling on “both sides to compromise on key issues,” and it might involve the Middle East Quartet. Israel would be told to stop building in the territories and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians would be told to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give up the “right of return” for the original 1948/49 refugees and their descendants.

Dutch Zionist Christians defy labeling with ‘Made in Israel’ warehouse by Cnaan Liphshiz

Popular among European Protestants, members of the Christians for Israel movement believe it is their religious and moral duty to help Jews return to their ancestral lands

NIJKERK, Netherlands (JTA) — As a boy, would often accompany his father, Karel, on the elder van Oordt’s weekly shopping excursions specifically seeking out products made in Israel.

A Christian Zionist businessman in Amersfoort, some 25 miles east of Amsterdam, Karel van Oordt sought to strengthen the Jewish state economically by purchasing its exports to feed his family of eight. But it wasn’t easy.

“At the greengrocer, my father asked for Jaffa oranges, but they didn’t offer those,” Pieter van Oordt recalled. “Then at the liquor store, dad asked for Israeli wines. Same reply.”

Four decades later, those Israeli goods and thousands more are available across the Netherlands thanks to the international advocacy group founded by Karel van Oordt in 1979. Pieter and his brother, Roger, have run Christians for Israel since their father’s death in 2013.

Through its own import agency, the Israel Products Center, or IPC, the organization brings in 120,000 bottles of Israeli wine each year, as well as many tons of Dead Sea cosmetics and other merchandise. Most of the products are sold in IPC’s own store, on its website or by a corps of 200 volunteer door-to-door sales agents, a majority of them women.

One in four life science innovations has Israeli roots, says expert- David Shama

Annual biomed conference is Israel’s ‘calling card’ for medical professionals interested in the latest in life science technology

Few people realize that more than one out of every four of the medicines, treatments, and technologies in use today have Israeli roots.

“Research in Israel is present in between 25% and 28% of the world’s successful biotech-based solutions,” according to Ruti Alon, a General Partner at Pitango Venture Capital and chairperson of the upcoming IATI-Biomed Conference, set to take place in Tel Aviv in May. “Many of the patents in pharmaceuticals that are now being used to treat cancer, heart problems, and much more were developed at Israeli institutions like Hebrew University or the Weizmann Institute,”

“All of the big pharma and health tech firms, from Merck to Pfizer to Sanofi, and many more, have R&D centers in Israel, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of start-ups that over the years have come up with unique solutions to some of the most pressing problems in biotech,” said Alon.

Some of those solutions and patents are part of the main treatments in some of the world’s most devastating diseases.

Exelon, for example, is a treatment for Alzheimer’s that helps patients cope with the disease and remain independent longer. Marketed by Novartis, the drug is based on research that was conducted at Hebrew University. Doxil, sold by Johnson and Johnson, effectively helps treat numerous cancers, and it, too, was developed at Hebrew U, along with researchers at Hadassah Medical Center. And, of course, there’s multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, developed at the Weizmann Institute and marketed by Israel’s own Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Many of Israel’s biotech and life science solutions were first introduced to the world at the annual IATI-Biomed Conference, now in its 15th year.

Interfaith Forum Ignores Islamic Immigration Questions Andrew Harrod

“Just using that expression ‘illegal immigrants’ is a form of oppressing the stranger,” a “very painful…inappropriate language biblically,” stated Rabbi Gerald Serotta at a Fairfax, Virginia, February 25 panel before about 50 listeners. Like him, “Welcoming the Stranger: Refugees and Immigrants in Our Midst,” a presentation of the controversial Islamic Gülen movement’s Rumi Forum, was uniformly uncritical towards current Middle Eastern refugee issues.

Serotta, an advisory board member of the leftwing rabbinical organization Truah, began the panel’s presentation of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theological perspectives on immigrants and refugees. Love for the stranger “suffuses the Hebrew Bible” with 36 corresponding scriptural passages, he stated while repeating the talking point that “people are not illegal, they may be undocumented.” He noted Judaism’s forefathers like Abraham migrating in the Old Testament and concluded that the “reason why we are commanded to love the immigrant is because the immigrant is us. We have moved in history.”

Patricia S. Maloof, former United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Director of Refugee Programs, reinforced Serotta’s Old Testament teachings with references to the New Testament. Hebrews 13:2 admonition to welcome strangers recalled Abraham’smeeting with angels in Genesis while the Holy Family itself fled to Egypt when King Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents threatened infant Jesus. His discussion of any charity shown to the “least of these” being like loving Himself taught that “by helping the stranger we are seeing Christ in the stranger,” she said.

ISIS forces children to execute Mosul civilians; creation of future jihadists – Jim Kouri

A former police advisor, who trained police officers in Middle Eastern countries including Iraq, reported to Conservative Base that Muslim children are being used in terrorist operations more and more in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other locations. According to Dennis Ronald Forrestal, a decorated law enforcement and intelligence veteran, one of the methods of hardening youngsters and making them feel guilt-free for killing is to force them to execute prisoners.

For example, in the war-torn Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, the leader of the dreaded Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also called “Daesh“ locally) used children as young as 10-years-old to execute at least 20 people.

“ISIS used Yazidi children who were kidnapped from their families to carry out terrorist and execution operations against the civilians, after the escape of the majority of its fighters. These children were kidnapped, brainwashed and forced to carry out criminal operations,” Forrestal reported.

“ISIS executed 20 people in Mosul for cooperating with the Iraqi security forces. ISIS forced 10-year-old children to [perform] the executions,” he added.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is attempting to create a whole new generation of children educated — or brainwashed — with religious extremism and filled with hatred for the non-believers, according to Britain’s counterterrorism think-tank, Quilliam Foundation.

The Quilliam think-tank reports that “The [Daesh] organization… focuses a large number of its efforts on indoctrinating children through an extremism-based education curriculum, and fostering them to become future terrorists. The current generation of fighters sees these children as better and more lethal fighters than themselves, because rather than being converted into radical ideologies they have been indoctrinated into these extreme values from birth, or a very young age.”

Video: The precariousness of Israel’s narrow waistline Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

1. Pressuring Israel to retreat to the pre-1967 ceasefire lines – which is an 8-15-mile sliver along the Mediterranean, dominated by the Judea & Samaria mountain ridge – ignores Jewish history and represents a victory of wishful-thinking over the 1,400-year-old reality of Mideast violence, unpredictability, doublespeak, tyranny and hate-education.

2. Mideast peace agreements are as durable as are Arab regimes, policies and accords, which have been, since the 7th century, the world’s most shifty, intolerant, violent, volatile and treacherous, as currently reflected by the intensifying Arab Tsunami from northwestern Africa to the Persian Gulf.

3. “Land for Peace” assumes that an Israeli withdrawal from Judea & Samaria would convince Arabs to accord the “infidel” Jew that which Muslim “believers” have denied one another for 1,400 years: peaceful coexistence and compliance with agreements.

4. “Land for Peace” would usher the Arab Tsunami into the mountain ridges of Judea & Samaria, which tower over 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructures, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel’s only international airport. It also towers over the Jordan Valley, Israel’s longest border.

5. “Land for Peace” would doom Jerusalem to be an enclave connected to the coastal plain through a 4-mile-wide corridor, which would be dominated by mountains under Arab sovereignty.

6. The width of pre-1967 Israel (8-15 miles) is equal to the length of DFW airport in Texas, the distance between JFK and La Guardia airports in NY, Kennedy Center and RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. The area of pre-1967 Israel (0.2% of the Arab World) is smaller than the gunnery range at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

7. Former Chairman of the US Joint C-o-S, the late General Earl Wheeler told President Lyndon Johnson: “The minimum requirements for Israel’s defense include most of the West Bank, the whole of Gaza and the Golan Heights.” 100 retired US Generals and Admirals cautioned Israel against withdrawing from Judea & Samaria, stating that is would be impossible to demilitarize the area effectively. The late Admiral Bud Nance:” The eastern mountain ridge of the West Bank is one of the world’s best tank barriers…. The western mountain ridge of the West Bank constitutes a dream platform of invasion to Israel’s narrow [8-15 miles] coastal plain. Control of the West Bank provides Israel the time [50 hours] to mobilize reservists [75% of Israel’s military], which are critical to Israel’s survival during a surprise Arab attack.” Most reservists reside in the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv-Haifa area, which is dominated by the Judea & Samaria mountain ridge.

ISIS Follows’ Palestinian Children’s Jihadi Indoctrination By Rachel Ehrenfeld

The Western media is shocked, shocked, by the findings of a six months’ study, documenting the jihadist indoctrination of “The Children of the Islamic State.” Released on March 7, the research by the London-based Quillian Foundation, which was supported and endorsed by the United Nations, “documented 254 instances where children have been used in Islamic State propaganda.”
It has also noted that “Schools and the education system…to shaping the hearts and minds of the next generation. The indoctrination that begins in schools intensifies in training camps, where children between the ages of 10 and 15 are instructed in shari’a, desensitised to violence, and are taught specific skills to best serve the state and take up the banner of jihad.”
That, however, should have come as no surprise for to the U.N., the media, or anyone following Palestinian indoctrination of children to jihad against Israel, especially after the Palestinian Authority was formed in 1994.

The Quillian report noted with worry that there are 31,000 pregnancies in the ISIS-controlled territories. But generations of Palestinians children have been fed a steady jihad, beginning in their mothers’ wombs.
According to the CIA Fact Book, the Gaza Strip, which it lists as a “country”, had 1,179,165 children and young adults in July 2015. There were 799,072 children (0-14 years; male 410,599/female 388,473);and 380,093 young adults (15-24 years; male 194,798/female 185,295)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) runs 252 school in Gaza, serving more than 240,000 children. The majority of the teachers in these schools are members of Hamas, which the U.N. has failed to designate as a terrorist group.

MAX BOOT: A CRINGE-WORTHY PRESIDENCY

Reading Jeff Goldberg’s fascinating account in The Atlantic of his conversations with the president of the United States, the conclusion I came to was that Obama was born in the wrong country. (And, yes, contrary to the sinister suspicions of “birthers” like Donald Trump, he really was born in this country.) He would have made a great Scandinavian prime minister.

As Goldberg relates: “Obama has always had a fondness for pragmatic, emotionally contained technocrats, telling aides, ‘If only everyone could be like the Scandinavians, this would all be easy.’” And like a good Scandinavian, he views global warming as the world’s biggest security threat: “ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States,” he told Goldberg. “Climate change is a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don’t do something about it.”

I see Obama as another Jesper Berg, the fictional prime minister of Norway in the great TV series “Occupied” (viewable on Netflix), another handsome, intelligent politician who is also transfixed by the threat of global warming and is nonchalant when the Russians start to invade his country in order to seize its oil production. (Berg had tried to shut down the entire oil industry because he thought it contributed to global warming.)

Like Berg, Obama doesn’t seem unduly disturbed by evidence of Russia’s nefarious designs. He says of Vladimir Putin: “He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesn’t suddenly make him a player. You don’t see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that matter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.”

This is almost a caricature of the Scandinavian mindset which holds that the only thing that matters is multilateral meetings at forums like the United Nations or the G20. Putin doesn’t seem to have gotten that memo. He may not be “helping to shape the agenda” at international talkfests, but he is shaping the agenda on the ground with his ferocious aggression which has left the United States and our allies reeling.